


We'll Always Go On

by EmmaElizaRose



Category: Titanic (1997)
Genre: Depression, F/M, Promises
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-02-23 10:04:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 6,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13187799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaElizaRose/pseuds/EmmaElizaRose
Summary: Rose, living two years after the disaster of the Titanic, questions again if she must really keep living for a promise that's already been broken.





	1. Grey Sky

New York City. It's quiet, now. Cool and grey beneath a cool grey sky. The rain smooths and blurs everything into a washed-out dream. People have floated away, up stairways and through front doors, shutting them behind them. The fog is too heavy, and the the air brings a creeping drowsiness into the veins of the city.

New York. The City that Never Sleeps. It's so quiet under the rain, so peaceful. But it never calms its sickened heartbeat because there is somehow pride in never sleeping, as though it is better to lie back, sedated with the muted rush of itself through the quiet rain, rather than living and quieting and letting life pass by without racing it miles past the finish.

There is nothing left for so many people in these dull grey streets and still, still they rush about as though there is no place more important to be than wherever they are going, and there is no time, no time to stop and breathe, to look at the sky, to to blink clear the dream and look around at all the people that are just as lost within themselves as anyone else.

Why do they pretend that there is nowhere to be but anywhere else?

Maybe it's easier for her to ask that, her voice filled with genuine confusion at the blur. Or maybe she could ask it indignantly, furious at the lack of appreciation people hold for the time they take for granted. She could say it, because of where she has been. She has the right to do so. She has paid dearly for that right.


	2. Lonely

There is nobody for me to talk to. I just like to imagine that any conversation I hold with myself contains the same depth of interaction as one I might hold with anyone else.

I'm not lonely.

I'm alone, but I'm not lonely. There's just a sort of empty sadness at the fact of it. Loneliness would come if there was somebody I wanted to talk to, to argue with, to smile with, to dance with, to run with, to laugh with, to hold close to me.

If somebody tries to talk to me, I will shut them out. If they try to argue with me, I will turn away and close my eyes. If somebody smiles at me, I will force my mouth to pretend I am happy when I want nothing more than to disappear.

Dancing... Dancing is another story. I have not run or laughed from my heart in two years.


	3. Walking

Miles and miles of grey sky. I can't see them, because there is stone everywhere.

This city.

This city with its sounds and sky and everybody moving, moving, moving.

I think that I stay here because it's easier to fade away. I think I would have faded away, even without it.

This way, I can convince myself that it was my choice.

I walk when most people don't. I like to think about the physical representation of the network of lives here. They're traced through these streets; etched into time and space.

I walk at night, tracing my fingers along the stones of these buildings. My nails make a scratching noise on the rock. 

Skritch.

Except it's drawn out, because I trace for hours. 

Skriiiiiiiiiitch. 

Above me there are stars and I want to think that you're there, just above them.

I am here, and the city is here, and the sky with its stars is here.

It looks like dense fabric, wrapped tightly around something precious.

Remember when we looked up at it together?

Are you looking up at it now?


	4. Technically

My house is shaky and windblown. Everything passes straight through it. 

Everything but me.

There's a faded charm to it, I guess. It wasn't built to be the way it is. Nobody builds a house meaning for it to be a ghost.

I kind of like it.

It makes it seem like it stays grounded for no other reason than that it wants to. 

It's my home, technically.

Technically. 

It's funny, isn't it? It means you're focusing on one side of an argument. Technically, it's my home. I bought it and I live here. This is the center point of my life. I start my day here and end it here. So maybe it's the beginning point. Or the end point. It depends on how you look at it.

Technically, it's all of them.

But technically, it is not my home. 

Technically, I have no home.

I can never go home. Home isn't a place. Home was a person.

Home was you.


	5. Footsteps

To the ghost house, light and breezy.

I'm too deep in my own head. My feet take me places when my mind is far away, and it works out just fine.

In a place like this city, I'm as alone in crowded streets as I am at home. 

Home, technically.

I'm home, coat and shoes off.

I'm climbing the stairs to the roof, where I can look out at the city.

What does a footfall on a step sound like? 

It's not a thud, exactly. It's softer then that. Less sporadic, I guess. Bare feet on wooden steps are softer. Heels on stairs are like a hollow clapping. 

Or like horseshoes. Clip-clopping to nowhere and back again.

Clack clack clack clack clack.

Not stairs, anymore; wooden floors.

Wooden decks.

Running, running, not looking back. 

You know that feeling that's just like dizziness, except dizziness is when it's in your head? And this is creeping through your chest? 

Hollow, beating, fuzzy and faded around the edges.

Pushing on your chest, inside and out as you run down the deck of a ship.

The kind of run that's not towards somewhere.

The kind of run that's away from something.


	6. Red

Red, red, red. 

Red hair flying, red dress snapping, red eyes streaming.

Red from arms in places it shouldn't be.

Help me help me help me.

And then you did.

Screaming in the middle of a crowded room.

And you looked up. And you saw right through me with those beautiful eyes of yours.

Two halves of one heart, across the miles and miles of ignorance that is the world we live in?

Why you? 

Why me?


	7. Library

I walk into the library today because I can't handle everything. I can't handle any of the everythings right now. 

So here I am.

The first time I came here was like an audition. I remember knowing that there was an old building I passed all the time to get home, and never paid much attention to it. But they started a renovation on it, expanding. 

So then there was an old building with new wings, freshly open to the world.

Sound familiar?

I could feel the air of both the faded and fresh in this library, and for a moment, it was like nothing about me had changed.

I love the way the air feels in a library. You can run your fingers along spines and you're touching years of lives taken to structure thoughts into sentences and paragraphs, bound neatly in their paper and fabric and leather.

I wanted to make a good impression. My entire past life had been spent on impressions and now I could choose how to make them, and the people I made the to.

They like me enough. An actress who performs classics and treats books with care and respect. What's not to like?

Sounds bump lazily into each other here, muffled between the padded carpet and the heavy curtains. It's light and shadows and dust motes and soothing, heavy quiet.

I'm sitting between the bookshelves, fading away slowly like theses ink-marked pages. 

Thinking about how I lived in books before I met you.

Now here I am again.


	8. Cal

I used to love Cal, I think.

Or, I used to think I loved Cal.

He swept me away with flattery and gifts, a giddy wave of spiraling confusion. 

I was sixteen years old. Falling in love, minus the love. Tumbling into a place I couldn't escape because everything, everything was slipping, me most of all. 

So, Cal, I'm remembering you from my faded, quiet world, behind miles of bookcase, where you can't reach me.

Where you can't hurt me anymore.

It was a party. It's always a stupid party. 

I don't actually dislike parties. I did, until I went to one with a different crowd, dancing and spinning and laughing, breathing, living.

But that was a different time. There is my now, quiet and crumbled; my future, whitewashed and grey. And the past, as fragmented and varied as shards of stained glass. Your party, Cal, was opaque and heavy and its jagged edges dug themselves through my mind, tearing wounds that gaped open and bled out regret.

The one that came ages later, the one where I remembered to live, is iridescent and beautiful. The edges are smooth, rounded by sand and water. A piece of sea glass I pick up and turn in my mind, wearing thin the pages of a treasured memory.

You made me hate parties, Cal. Do you remember this one? 

Champagne on ice, clinking and chattering like the people drinking it.

Empty, mindless, hollow.

I was going crazy because this was the fifth in as many days and the quietly persistent buzzing of it made me want to scream out loud.

I was already screaming on the inside.

Everything was polite and so shallow.

And through the people, a little while away, I saw you. You were standing with that formal stiffness that seemed to infect every person in that goddamn room, and you locked your eyes on me and didn't look away.

I was supposed to look away, and then turn back and smile shyly up at you through my lashes.

I was so done with my mother's lessons, how to act and look and stand and breathe and think.

So I stared straight back at you, just as unrelenting.

I expected you to look surprised, maybe even taken aback. That would have satisfied me enough to continue internally dying without disturbing those around me.

Instead, you looked amused. You smiled at me. It was a condescending smile, more of a smirk than anything, like you were above my petty little rebellion.

I thought maybe you appreciated my strength. Maybe you cared. 

I was so stupid.

You stared back at me, and your cold eyes slid off of my face, lower than they should have gone. You thought you had the right to look at me like that, as though I would think you were admiring my dress. It made me feel empty to be taken in like that, like you thought you owned my body. As though I owed anything to you at all. But maybe you were different, and I tried to tell myself you were just admiring my dress, that everything was okay.

I should have known, I should have seen.

I should have run when I could have.

You liked being powerful, Cal. You always had been, and you would take any opportunity to bring yourself up.

You saw me across a room, and you saw my little act of rebellion.

You didn't respect me at all. All you saw was that taming me would put you that much more above me, and so that's what you decided to do.

And when you failed at that, you had to break me.

Well.

Good job, Cal.

Good job.


	9. Velveteen Curtains

My house with its windblown walls and roof, standing against the city like it was dropped in the wrong place. Climbing the stairs seems like something wrong, like I'm trespassing. Then I remember that I bought this house and so it is my "home." I miss the feeling of salt air, but at the same time, the ocean is really the last place I want to be.

 

I want it to feel like the library, and I want it to feel like home. I want it to be so many things that it's not, and I know that it's never going to be any of them.

It's a place of my own, though, without a trace of the world I escaped. I guess there's nothing else I could have asked for.

My favorite thing here is the curtains. I looked through so much fabric when I went to buy them; it was one of those details I focused so hard on in order to. Block. Some. Things. Out. 

The velvet was beautifully rich, heavy and smooth. I feel like the velveteen had some sort of stupid metaphorical significance, though. Like, it looks like a rich expensive fabric but it's really made of something simple.

There's been a mistake, you know. You got mailed to the wrong address.

I step into the living room. The bare wooden floor is patchy under the legs of a couple of thin chairs.

I did, didn't I?

I remember a dark sky, scattered with stars. I remember the ocean that swallowed you up only a day later. I remember your smile.

The curtains are as dense as that night sky, shutting out the light of the outside world. On my hands and knees, curling the fabric around me like a cocoon. 

You were standing so close to me, and I thought about how easy it would be to close the space between us, how easy it would be to kiss you. You looked at me like I outshone the starlight. You were something I could never have.

But I wanted you so badly.

Velveteen on all sides of a threadbare room.

Nothing can touch me anymore.


	10. Robert

I met you when I stepped cautiously into the world, head full of pain and half-broken dreams. 

A theater downtown was auditions, and what did I have to lose?

"Robert Calvert," you said with a smile, and you shook my hand like we were already friends.

I didn't see you though. Your eyes were the wrong color. They were almost blue. Almost the most beautiful color in the world. Almost like eyes that told me to run free.

Almost steely like rusted metal, almost like eyes on the other end of a table that reminded me I wasn't a person, only a name.

Almost, almost, almost.

Romeo and Juliet. That was the one, wasn't it? The balcony and lights, moonlight and flowered speech. 

It made me think of other, higher hights and then I was falling into icy water again.

You were Romeo, and I was Juliet, and you thought that meant something, I guess. You were Paris, he was Romeo, and I was Juliet.

But you couldn't have known that, could you?

Could you have reflected on my distant dismissal of your obvious advances? Could you have known that you had already lost this battle?

Why did you try so hard? Look close and see I am broken, and leave so I can be broken, alone. Don't try and be there while I trace shapes in my mind, things that were and might be and should have been. You're speaking to a shell. Leave me alone.

You did ask me why I was broken, though. Just like that. 

"Rose." and I didn't turn around. 

A hand on my shoulder and you turned me gently to face you. I was watching the sun over this skyline, and you turned me out of the distance to face me. "Tell me what is the matter. I want to help you. Give me a chance. Please, Rose."

Silence in the air, except for the noise of the city,

Is background noise still background noise if there's no foreground?

Let me trace the shape of the sky with my eyes.

I could describe the shape of the creature destroying me from the inside out, and hope with what is left of my heart that my description will provide some defense against it.

Does the sky curve? 

What is the shape of an infinity?

Find someone who isn't already gone, Robert. Find someone who isn't like me. But if they are broken, too, then don't break them further.

Don't break them like you broke me.


	11. Theater

The little theater, left behind in the flurry of sold out shows and newspaper articles and a wave of success.

So here we are. 

Well, here I am, standing in the half-light of the once grand, now closed theater. I left my coat behind, once, and I went back to get it so that Robert would stop offering me his. There's a key hooked behind the framed poster of our production of Sleeping Beauty. 

I let myself in, and it's empty. 

It's been empty for nearly a year now.

I climb the stairs of the catwalk to the lighting system, my palms streaked grey with the soft dust of passing time. I love this theater. It was my promise to Jack, my promise to go on. My promise to live and love and make my dreams real. And I did. 

More handrails, more grey dust. Velvety soft under my hands, which themselves are not quite as soft as they used to be, strengthened by the work I had thrown myself into once, in the middle of a tired May.

Dust under sliding hands, muted sliding. 

Shoooooff. If I walk quickly, I can make the sound long, where my hand drags out before stopping.

Shoooooooooooooooooooooofffff.

I'm at the top of the catwalk now, and the metal is creaking beneath my hands and feet. More dust, dust motes swirling through the sunlight of a late afternoon that flows in from still dusty windows. 

Singing, acting, lights, and crowds.

There's a space between me in the floor, and I think about other handrails and hights.

It's easier not to think, sometimes.

The house and stage up here from the catwalk are strangely different, the scuffed wood facing the velvety chairs.

I took the stairs down, once, on the other side, so I could step onto Juliet's balcony and speak out loud as though I were alone, and Robert wasn't also on the stage. And there weren't people perched in their chairs with their opera glasses.

Down the opposite set of rickety stairs. The first performance here had been Romeo and Juliet. Again. The public had loved it at our little theater.

More railings.

Shoooooff.

I'm on the stage now.

Spinning slowly, my arms out. The dust swirls over and around the spaces that my body makes in the air. I stop, and turn to face the ghosts of the people that should be here.

Something catches in my throat, and an aching sadness settles over me.

There should be people here. There should be lights and music. This place was meant to carry stories between humans. This place should be filled with people who want to watch another world live for a few moments before they go back to their own lives.

A theater shouldn't be empty like this. A theater's empty should be swift and breathless, a quiet lull before restarting.

And then it's bright again.

Maybe music is made up of the spaces between notes. 

Maybe books are made up of the gaps between lines. 

Maybe life is made up of the moments when your eyes are closed, and the world is quiet.

Maybe the quiet is all there is to make everything else mean something. The voice of this place is choked by the lack of ears listening, the lack of an audience waiting, and there's nothing I can do here but lie here, staring up at the ceiling to the upper window, the only one that isn't boarded over. 

I watch it until the sun leaves my view and the light streams sideways through it, shifting like copper shining underwater.

The dust motes are thick in the air, suspended in place through the ghosts of passing dreams.


	12. Dreams

The dreams that fill you and the things behind you force you forward, and you're running, running, running towards the future and you pray to God, or Heaven, or the Powers-That-Be, or whatever. 

We hope to something, anything, that we will have some say in that future, some control. We want to fill up the spaces within ourselves.

We want to be happy. 

We want to be satisfied.

But the dreams breathe real and you're still missing things. The filled-in goals gave you room to want more, or maybe you always wanted more but the bigger holes kept you from noticing the little cracks.

Fire burning and heart aching because there will never be enough, never ever ever. It's all replaced and when you have it it fades.

Unless you lose again.

Unless you're free-falling for a split second, or a moment, or a minute, and when you're caught again your breath comes fast and choking and you press a hand against the point where your rib cage meets itself and tell your heart to stop slamming against its bony prison.

Calm, calm, calm.

And you remember that you're alive.

Stay that way because you have reasons to stay. You have the dreams you built for yourself and you remember why you built them.

In your mind, you can run your hand over the frames you pulled out of tears and pain, and remember the beauty of them, and the glow is there.

A child's toy, won through pleading and wailing, abandoned some time after being acquired, struggle forgotten.

Until she is an older girl.

Until it is the last, and so an active reminder of what she has lost.

Too busy with the memories to dream of running away again.


	13. Panic

The doctors rushed over me because I was unresponsive.

Ha.

I wanted to die so badly. It would have been okay if it hadn't been my fault. Slip out of the cold and into the warmth of your arms.

I promised and I swam for the whistle and I survived. I was picked up and worried over and nursed back to health. They saved me, and what was left of you.

They cared, and it hurt and was stupid because they should have come back. They ran away when you were falling into a sleep that nobody woke up from.

I didn't cry for a long time.

Everything rocked back and forth and I was sick and I wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, really.

There were too many people and too much noise, and I could feel something rising in my throat and it felt like something was pushing on my chest and the room closed in-

I couldn't breathe and they tried to move me but I wouldn't let them touch me and everything was too loud and-

Something pricked my arm and it all went quiet.


	14. Medicine

Something in my arm and the whole world was fuzzy and I was floating somewhere in between.

It was like everything was fragmented and I was looking at my universe through a cut diamond, all facets and refracted shards of light.

Broken glass.

That's what my life is. Shattered by a few careless moves and picking it up to fix it made the pieces cut into my hands and it only hurts more.

I saw my life as it could have been, with Jack. Jack, we stood in front of an ocean together, watching the sun set across the reddened sky. We rode a roller coaster and I came down so dizzy that I would have fallen straight over, but you caught me and we stood in the foaming surf, laughing until we cried.

It hurt so badly to watch the life that we could've had together fly away in front of me. Dull, aching breaths that scraped through my insides made me question why I was still taking them. 

I saw a world of terror with Cal in it, throwing my life beneath his feet.

My mother turned away with her back straight and her eyes down.

My father was gone and I was alone.

Fear and doubt through everything.

Did I ever even know them? Why was it all so fleeting? What had I done to drift away into this narrow world?

I would have drunk myself away.

Except.

The Maybe that kept me alive.


	15. Quiet

Some days are too much in their vast entirety.

Some days are too quiet in their spacious layout and too loud in their rushed passing.

Some days I watch the light grow and fade from this window, wanting a change and wanting a standstill.

Some days I think of my father, and how just after my birthday they told him he was sick. That birthday he had given me a hairpin.

"A butterfly, Rosebud." He put it into my outstretched hands. "Because I know that nothing will stop you from flying to the ends of the Earth to achieve your goals." 

Mother smiled.

"It brings out the green in her eyes. Rose, darling, would you like me to put your hair up with it?"

Fourteen years old, young enough that I still wore my hair down my back. I felt like a lady, with my new green butterfly keeping my hair twisted up.  
"Thank you, Papa!" I hugged him, and even though I wasn't so little anymore, he picked me up and swung me around, laughing with me. Like nothing was ever going to change.

My last birthday with him. He left us months later, and I cried at his bedside and begged him to stay. My mother left and it was just me and Papa. 

We had said everything that there was to be said but I felt so hollow, so helpless.

The last of the warmth from his hands wisped away, and I knew that I was really, truly alone.

And here I am, sideways on this couch.

I've been looking out the window for so long that I'm barely seeing anything anymore. I guess it's just comforting to know that I still can see.

Quiet, quiet, quiet.

It's pressing and massive and for just today I've let myself be lonely.

I wish my father had been there for me.

I wish I had the love of my life with me.

I wish that someone were here to say something, anything.

Anything hurts less than the quiet.


	16. Hope

I would have drunk away the pain. I would have drowned my mind in perpetual, temporary numbness.

Except that there was one small chance that kept me alive.

Every single day, I hoped with everything that was left of my heart that the slimmest of chances would become a reality.

Every single day. 

The world passed in a sluggish haze, everything slow and dizzy. It took forever for a minute to tick by on the cracked clock in this house. Time dragged its feet in its dreary march away from you.

You.

You had had a funny way with time, really. It sped away under your fingers, flitted away against your lips. 

When you were with me, a thousand forevers would have sped away in the blink of an eye.

And then I realized it had been a month, and I clung tight to hope like a familiar hand, like a raft in an endless black ocean.

And then it had been a month and a half, and I was working in a theater group. I met my colleagues. One of whom was named Robert Calvert.

His eyes were a little too hard, his smile a little too sharp.

He showed interest in me.

I shut out neighbors and pushed people away. I closed into myself and people that could have been my friends backed away from me. The theater group were the only ones I made an effort with.

A smile, here and there. The quiet chatter of friendly, if shallow, conversation lying under the work of one day after the other.

Except that Robert looked at me in a way that I didn't like.

When I passed him I could tell that he was watching me, trying to be subtle but the strain of his eyes pushing towards their corners gave itself away in the awkward tilt of his head.

I did not tell him, or any of them, what scratched at the inside of my mind. The clawing of something that was part of myself. Something I held back. I was fragmented, and if I let that piece of me out, let it slip away into the air, it would be gone. The wind would blow right through the holes that went right through me.

It was so powerful. I thought that maybe, even if it wasn't the kind I needed, it was a start. It was something inside me that was strong.

It was strong enough to tear away whatever strength I might have had left.

I could have coughed it out and smoothed over some of the pieces. I could have spoken, and maybe been a little less crumbled.

But I tried to swallow it, and it pulled a hole through me. Now I am smaller than before.

I tried to stay away from Robert but he stood at every turn I made, leaning casually, smiling pleasantly. 

The crew thought it was a wonderful idea. Romeo and Juliet, together in real life?! The audience would love that!

I tried.

I tried, I tried, I tried.

I tried to push him away but he moved right back towards me, like I was hitting through water. I turned away and he moved to face me.

Nearly three months passed.

And finally, finally, I confirmed what I had hoped could be real for so long. Since the last time I saw you, Jack.

I don't know if my... 

Friends?

I don't know if my co-workers realized as soon as I did.

I performed, of course, and I came to work, of course.

But I would hear fast whispers in huddled groups that would stop as I came near, the owners of the voices starting up like startled animals.

So, why hide it? What did I have to lose? At the end of rehearsal, I stood, and announced that, although some of the present company might have already noticed, I wanted to clarify that the rumors were correct. I would figure out arrangements as soon as I could, but what people suspected was true.

I was pregnant.


	17. Falling

A day of half - resisted advances. A week of reluctant rendez-vous-es.

That's what you liked to call them, Robert.

You know who else liked to call them that?

Take a wild guess. Squint hard into my past; the ripped canvas of the painted sets, torn to shreds by my own mind.

Can you see him?

He's in the darker corners. Razor eyes.

Can you see him?

I can.

A month of one - sided courtship, because you just can't take a god damned hint, can you. Stop looking at me. Why are you like this? Leave glass fragments alone. Pick them up and they'll tear through you, too. Go buy yourself a stained glass window if you're so insistent. Fill your house with blown glass vases if you're so hooked on my addled metaphors.

Or, maybe, you know me better than I give you credit for. Maybe, you know that glass can't hurt you if the sharp edges are tearing through something else. Like, I don't know, me?

But I can sit behind these curtains I have, waiting for something, or anything, or nothing.

A dull, weak glow erases the blackness behind my eyelids. Funny, how the slightest trace can ruin the entirety of the whole. Shut my eyes tighter, add my hands. Then curtains and doors and streets and buildings.

Don't come closer to me. You're never far enough away. Your existence weighs on this tiresome city like a phobia on a sleepless mind.

I could run away. I could disappear into the wind, leaving everything behind me.

Where will I run to if I don't know where I am to begin with?

What could I do at that house party? I closed my eyes but the lights were still there, just barely under the surface. The world, reminding me that I couldn't escape, that it's still here, that I'm still here.   
Robert holds my hand. It is not part of me. Don't think about it. Don't feel it. Don't pull it away in front of all of these people.   
But my skin crawls like it's trying to leave my body, trying to escape the hand that's on mine, your hand.

I am alone here. I am alone, surrounded by voices. They are my own. They are not. They are real. They are not. They are smokey grey wisps in a foggy grey sky, an impossibility of useless obscurity. 

I had to leave. I tried to excuse myself. I wasn't feeling too well, I said. It was true, because Robert had moved his hand to my waist.  
A sick feeling tingled in my lower stomach, fogging my head and numbing my limbs. I knew it wasn't the baby; being sick from my pregnancy didn't make me feel like I wanted to sink through the floor.  
I have to go, I said, trying to sound as sorry about it as possible.  
I almost missed the look that Robert gave to a couple of the cast members. It doesn't matter, just go. Walk to the door.  
Robert escorted me, and the rest of the group hung back.

I can stand in a crowd of people and they'll be a million miles away. They are a plethora of thoughts, a clamor of silent noises.

Dip curious fingers through that surface. See a network of lives, disconnected from its physical reality. Meanings that aren't meanings, personal swirls of emotion following a single idea in lifetimes of nostalgia and memory.

They are stars; a sky of single points, tiny and bright on flat, dark paper, wondered at from afar with hissing breaths and wide, unblinking eyes.

They are giants of fiery depth, full of complexities and light. They fill up miles with their deafening lives, silent in a soundless vacuum.

We know this but we shrug it aside and admire those icy flecks with shallow eyes.

I couldn't escape the grip on my arm. It wasn't rough, but it was insistent, and I couldn't tear away from it without making a scene.

I wish I had.

Your mouth was moving and I was staring right at you, but your voice was warped and tinny, like your words were pushing from somewhere far away, like I was under water.

I remember fragments.

I remember you said something about work, about money, about how pretty I was, how I wasn't like any girl you'd met before.

I remember, like a bad dream, the feeling of your mouth suddenly moving on mine, of the lead in my stomach, of the ice in my heart, of the pain that whimpered feebly from some quiet corner of my mind.

And I finally pushed you away.

You looked a little surprised and slightly amused, like I was puppy that had playfully darted away when you tried to pet it.

"Oh, come on, Rose. Nobody's watching. You don't have to be so uptight; I'm the only one here."

The murmur of voices drifted from a room away, a dull roaring in my ears.

"No." I whispered it so quietly that it might have made no sound at all, wisping unnoticed from my lips. "No," I said, more insistently, frustration channeled into the single word.

Your smile dropped. You spoke again. "What did you just say to me?" Your tone had shifted so quickly and the sudden dangerous softness in your voice left my head reeling.

I felt dizzy but when I answered, my voice sounded like someone else's, even and self-assured.

"I don't love you, Robert. I never have." The truth, finally bared. The last of it slipped out, catching in my throat.

"I never could."

Your eyes were sharp and dark. In the moment before they fell, they cut through me. Leeching away at my insides, leaving behind a hollow, distant fear.

"Of course."

You said it quietly, like a surrender, like an admission of defeat. Like you accepted it. Like there was no cause for the dread crawling like poison through my veins.

A thousand stars, twinkling like diamonds in velvet. Selfish and icy, illuminated but unilluminating.

Starlight. A sheer veil, there but barely perceptible against the heavy dark.

The sky stretches forever, the stars watching coldly from its folds. In an infinity of darkness, they mark the distance. They tell us how impossibly small we truly are.

The vastness of our world, hopelessly dwarfed by the universe, inevitably looming, impossible to deny.

Not that nobody's tried.

We are microscopic. We are temporary. We don't leave a mark on the void, try as we might to make something of ourselves while we're alive.

Unsinkable, they said. Unbreakable, untouchable, undefeatable.

Did the world hear us, and put us in our place? Or was even that so insignificant it didn't even bother to watch? Was it was nothing but ourselves that tore us apart?

And in the darkness, the emptiness that is filled by everything and nothing, each individual fragment is indescribably small.

One, or two, or a hundred could disappear, and it wouldn't make a difference. A change in one wouldn't change the universe.

Robert looked at me with cold, hard eyes.

"Of course," he said again. "I supposed you're not supposed to fall in love." Leaning closer, he hisses, "that's how it is with whores, isn't it? Because that's what you are, Rose. You act like you're above us all, but you're nothing but a lonely little girl. Not even the scum that knocked you up wants you."

I thought of you, Jack. I remembered your smile, the warmth in your eyes.

I remembered the cold stillness of your hands, the ice in your hair.

I was alone in this.

From somewhere far away, I found my voice.

"You're one to talk," I hissed. My voice sounded cold and smooth, like a layer of ice hiding my fear.

I couldn't bring myself feel regret for the words, even as Robert's face flowed from shock to anger. 

Not even when his hand made sharp contact with my cheek, snapping my head back.

As I fell back, I was beyond feeling much of anything at all.

And as I tumbled down the stairs, everything had already gone black.


	18. Left Behind

It's hard to realize how much someone's life entwines with yours, until suddenly, it doesn't. Everything is knitted so tightly into itself, and then somebody is gone, and their threads unravel with them.

You just didn't know how many there were.

You can brace yourself for it. You can try to grasp the dragging pain of it while it still hasn't happened, to try and minimize the blow before it's hit.

You understand it at some level, the way you cling to those you've always clung to, hoping that your desperation will fend off some part of the looming inevitability that creeps towards you in the dark.

It is a practiced silence; a predicted fall. You know it is there; you can feel it with your mind.

Fingers, stretching out in the dark, terrified to find the things that eyes can not.

The spaces between words on a page, the lull between notes in a melody. The pause in a speech as someone breathes in to continue. The interruption of eye contact in a blink, the fragment of darkness so small that it is forgotten in the time it would take to blink again.

Flashes of emptiness, glimpsed a million miles away. Flickers of fear, hidden deep in the corners of your mind.

Look the other way to escape it; deny it to keep it at bay. Accept it and it consumes you.

To trust someone with a part of yourself is a risk.

To give them a piece of you is to let them tear you apart.


End file.
